Tag Archives: Hell

Satan Bound for 1,000 Years

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Satan chained and bound by the angel (Beatus Apocalypse illumination). Medieval illuminations often depict Satan as an African Muslim, similar to the Moors who invaded Spain; the Moors personify the Enemy, the Other.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven with the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is Devil and the Satan, and bound him for a thousand years…. When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be let loose from his prison. (Apocalypse 20:1-2, 7)

Satan is bound in prison for 1,000 years. This period of 1,000 years is taken by most early interpreters to mean the entire period of human history from the Crucifixion to the Last Days. Satan is bound in chains by Christ but not totally incapacitated–his minions still tempt and harass the human race. St. John describes each Christian’s victory over Satan, usually by martyrdom, as the “first resurrection;” the “second resurrection” is the General Resurrection of all the dead on Judgement Day.

Satan is loosed at the end of human history not so that he can unleash his anger any more against the human race; he is loosed so that he can be finally and definitively be cast down. Many early preachers used the image of a chicken or a snake beheaded to describe Satan: slain by Christ on the Cross, yet still able to make a mess and scare humans by spewing blood from the fatal wound but seeming to still be alive, running around–“like a chicken with its head cut off!”–or wriggling about.

Satan is often described or painted as having dark or black skin; often, a devil is described as looking like “an Ethiopian” by early Christian monks. Having black skin is not necessarily a dishonor in the Old Testament; the bride in the Song of Songs is “dark and beautiful.” Neither is appearing dark always associated with evil by other cultures: Clare Rothschild points out that “the Nile received its name from the Greek word νεῖλος (‘valley’). Since the river deposits black sediment after it floods, the Egyptians called the river ‘Ar’ (‘black’)…. Black is used of Egyptian gods and goddesses as an honorific: kmwr = ‘Great Black One’ for Osiris and km as epithet used with the name of the god (e.g. Hathor, Apis, Min, Thoth, etc.) or kmt, goddess (e.g. Isis)….” But the “counter-divine” is described as black by Sophocles.

Rothschild suggests that the devils and Satan were associated with Ethiopia because Ethiopia was outside Roman-Byzantine imperial control and was therefore associated with lawlessness. Several church fathers use the illustration that all humans were once Ethiopians (lawless) but have now been brought from lawlessness to righteousness by Christ. Pamela Patton suggests that medieval Spanish interpretations of the Apocalypse–such as the Beatus Apocalypse illumination above–align Satan and Ethiopians as a way to equate Satan with the Moors who invaded the Iberian peninsula and personified the Other, the Enemy.

Rothschild points out many fascinating associations with the color black that might also have influenced the depiction of Satan.

The Whore of Babylon

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Two depictions of the whore of Babylon: left, in the Beatus Apocalypse (an 11th century Romanesque illuminated manuscript); right, a 1532 hand-colored woodcut by Hans Burgkmair in Luther’s translation of the New Testament.

I saw a woman mounted on a scarlet beast…. the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and bedecked with gold and precious stones and pearls. In her hand she held a gold cup full of all obscenities and the filth of her fornication…. I saw the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s people and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. (Apoc. 17:3-4, 6)

This woman, the famous “Scarlet Woman” and the “Whore of Babylon,” is the antithesis of the woman clothed with the sun in Apocalypse 12. The woman clothed with the sun gives birth to Christ in her children; the Scarlet Woman is drunk with the blood of those children, now martyred. The woman clothed with the sun is attacked by the dragon, the Antichrist; now the dragon, the Antichrist, escorts the Scarlet Woman in her apparent hour of triumph. The woman clothed with the sun is a mother who remains forever a virgin; the Scarlet Woman is the mother of all abominations and prostitutions imaginable. If the woman clothed with the sun is Sophia, the Divine Wisdom (Proverbs 8-9, Baruch 3-4, Wisdom 6-8), then the Scarlet Woman is the “loose woman” whose house is the gateway to Hell (Proverbs 7, 9).

The icons of Novgorod used scarlet as the background of divine light, out of which the saints stepped to greet the faithful. It is also the color of the Hellmouth, the great beast who devours the damned in icons of the Last Judgement. Scarlet is the presence of God who can be accepted or rejected but never escaped.

The Scarlet Woman is at the moment of decision, capable of giving herself over completely to the destruction of beauty and light or of turning aside from that path of destruction. She can remain the Whore of Babylon or become the Virgin Mother of the faithful, the “holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride for her husband” (Apoc. 21:2).

(For a fuller discussion of the woman clothed with the sun and the whore of Babylon, see my chapter “Clothed in Scarlet, Clothed with the Sun: Thoughts on the Women of Apocalypse 12 and 17” in Earth’s Abominations: Philosophical Studies of Evil available here.)

Shaft of the Abyss

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Another fresco from Mt. Athos that illustrates the Apocalypse. Here we see the attack of the demonic locusts described in chapter 9, the “first woe” of three to be unleashed by the angels faithful to God. These locusts, an allusion to the 8th plague that struck Egypt at the Exodus, are allowed to torment–but not kill–the people of the earth.

I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given a key to the shaft of the abyss. He opened the shaft of the abyss, and smoke came up from the shaft like smoke from a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the shaft. Out of the smoke came locusts… (Apoc. 9:1-3)

A fallen star is a fallen angel. Hence, the star is “he” and given a key to the abyss. Stars–in apocalyptic writing–are always angels, whether good or bad, faithful to God or not. The tradition of fallen angels is ancient though it does not appear in the oldest layer of biblical writing; the story of the angelic fall is told in 1 Enoch 6-13, an expansion of Genesis 6:1-4. Jesus also refers to the fall of the angels: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven” (Luke 10:18).

The “abyss” is the usual Greek translation of “the deep” (ex. Gen. 1:2, Psalm 105:9, 107:26); it is also used to refer to Sheol (Job 41, Romans 10). In the Apocalypse, the abyss-the deep-sheol is the provisional prison of Satan and the fallen angels. In the gospel, the demons beg Jesus not to send them there (Luke 8:31). In this chapter of the Apocalypse, a shaft leads to the abyss-the deep-sheol and a fallen angel is allowed to unlock it.

Out of the abyss comes a great cloud of smoke and ash; from the smoke and ash come the monstrous locusts that attack people but are not allowed to attack the earth itself, unlike natural locusts. These supernatural locusts attack and torture but cannot kill; they can sting like scorpions and have a king (the word is more usually translated as “emperor”), unlike natural locusts (Proverbs 30:27).

Is the Apocalypse comparing the locusts to the imperial Roman system by using the Greek word for “emperor” rather than “king” to describe their organization? If so, then the Roman state–and any political system that is in opposition to God–can attack and torment the faithful but cannot destroy or overwhelm the Kingdom of God. I have recently discovered the work of Walter Wink, who writes about the demonic aspect of human political systems. As my friend Daniel says, “Phenomena like The Exorcist and The Amityville Horror do occur, but the real danger is from beings that assume power over humanity in the form of nations, corporations, political ideologies, and economic systems.”